Dear Julien,
For your 13th month, we celebrated your birthday belatedly with a small celebration at the local park. You really got into your cake and tried to stuff the whole piece into your mouth in one go. Sadly, your mouth is too small to permit this so you had to rip it apart and cram it in that way.

You also enjoyed strawberries and ice cream and goat cheese for your birthday meal. You are quite the fan of goat cheese and between you and Victor I have to stave off demanding little hands every time the goat cheese comes out of the fridge!

You mastered walking over the course of this past month, though you are still a little bit slow and unsteady on your feet. You took your first steps just about a week after your first birthday and it’s been steady progress ever since then: every day a little bit further, every day increased balance and poise. Your little monkey toes are coming in handy now as they help you grip tightly to the floor. You’ve taken more than one spill unfortunately, some of them face first, but some kisses and hugs soon set you to rights.

You are getting more and more expressive, your word of the month is “No” pronounced, “No-ew” or “Neahhh” in this high pitched negative as you shake your head vigorously. Your “talking” is getting more and more complex as you string together babble into combinations that make perfect sense to you, but aren’t quite obvious to the rest of us yet. You are very serious about trying to get your point across now though, scrunching up your forehead and gazing solemnly at me with those big blue eyes until I get it right.

You’re still full of chuckles and laughter too. One of your favorite games is “chase me” usually across the bed first thing in the morning, or around the living room when you don’t want your diaper changed.

You’re fully into solid foods now and are no longer interested in baby items and you’re drinking cow’s milk from a bottle or cup. I stopped pumping for you about 2 weeks ago after our trip up to Seattle. You still nurse quite a bit at home, but you no longer need expressed milk during the day because you get plenty of water and other beverages and most of your calories are now coming from food.

You can feed yourself with a spoon, though you still like to shovel great fistfuls of stuff into your mouth and you’re starting to resist being fed. This is a very messy state of affairs, but it’s also great to be able to just sit you in your high chair with some pasta to pick through while the rest of us get a bite in edgewise.

You aren’t sleeping very well right now because you are working on cutting your molars (I can see them at the back of your mouth just below the gum line) and that means I’m not getting much rest either. I’m hoping these teeth come through soon so we can all get some zzzs! When you’re not having a bad teething night, you are sleeping 6-8 hours at a stretch, it’s just not very often that we get those stretches. I know it won’t be too much longer now though and then we can settle into a nice routine for you and for your big brother.

You’re still a little charmer with an impish grin and those enchanting blue eyes and I love to pick you up and raspberry your tummy or play pat-a-cake and peek-a-boo until you’re belly-laughing.